This is a brief post to summarize the details of an August 2012 bike tour from Boston to New York. For the sake of convenience, we rode to the New York border, rather than into the city. Our finishing ride along US-1 could easily be extended to ride into downtown New York City.

Our ride map – the true route – can be found on MapMyRide. We exported this ride data into a Garmin GPS route. To squeeze the 32,000+ native track-points into a GPS that allows for only 10,000 at time, I utilized GPSies.com‘s track filtering functionality. It worked like a charm. However, the openstreetmap data used as the basemap for our GPS left much to be desired. Most significantly, instead of route numbers (e.g., Route 66, Route 16), it utilized road names (“Main Street’). Garmin’s map tools, while more expensive (e.g., not free), may be the better choice.

There are two helpful campgrounds along the ride. The first is in the Natchaug State Forest. Contact the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection to arrange for a backpacking/camping permit for the Natchaug State Forest sites. Sites are rudimentary, but the Knowlton Brook camping area is close enough to the route and road to be helpful.

Due to a route change, we did not actually camp at the second site, but believe that it has warm showers and provides a good camping spot on an alterative route. This is the Kettletown State Park – camping reservations can be made online, through ReserveAmerica.

Our route change led us through New Haven, and eventually to US Route 1. At the advice of several locals, we avoided heavy, multi-multi-lane portions of US1 between New Haven and Stratford/Bridgeport by using the parallel RT 162. Note that some of the Route 1 portions (those we avoided) are more like four-lane highways; the 162 route-around is really, really helpful!

In its entirety, our ride topped 200 miles, which we covered in about 3 and a quarter days.